Section 19

19. We have to ask ourselves whether there are not certain Acts
which without the addition of a time-element will be thought of as
imperfect and therefore classed with motions. Take for
instance living
and life. The life of a definite person implies a certain adequate
period, just as his happiness is no merely instantaneous thing. Life
and happiness are, in other words, of the nature ascribed to Motion:
both therefore must be treated as motions, and Motion must
be regarded
as a unity, a single genus; besides the quantity and quality
belonging
to Substance we must take count of the motion manifested in it.

We may further find desirable to distinguish bodily from psychic
motions or spontaneous motions from those induced by external
forces, or the original from the derivative, the original motions
being activities, whether externally related or independent,
while the
derivative will be Passions.

But surely the motions having external tendency are actually
identical with those of external derivation: the cutting issuing
from the cutter and that effected in the object are one,
though to cut
is not the same as to be cut.

Perhaps however the cutting issuing from the cutter and
that which
takes place in the cut object are in fact not one, but "to cut"
implies that from a particular Act and motion there results a
different motion in the object cut. Or perhaps the
difference [between
Action and Passion] lies not in the fact of being cut, but in the
distinct emotion supervening, pain for example: passivity has this
connotation also.

But when there is no pain, what occurs? Nothing, surely, but the
Act of the agent upon the patient object: this is all that
is meant in
such cases by Action. Action, thus, becomes twofold: there is that
which occurs in the external, and that which does not. The duality
of Action and Passion, suggested by the notion that Action [always]
takes place in an external, is abandoned.

Even writing, though taking place upon an external object, does
not call for passivity, since no effect is produced, upon the tablet
beyond the Act of the writer, nothing like pain; we may be told that
the tablet has been inscribed, but this does not suffice for
passivity.

Again, in the case of walking there is the earth trodden
upon, but
no one thinks of it as having experienced Passion [or suffering].
Treading on a living body, we think of suffering, because we reflect
not upon the walking but upon the ensuing pain: otherwise we should
think of suffering in the case of the tablet as well.

It is so in every case of Action: we cannot but think of it as
knit into a unity with its opposite, Passion. Not that this later
"Passion" is the opposite of Action in the way in which being burned
is the opposite of burning: by Passion in this sense we mean the
effect supervening upon the combined facts of the burning and the
being burned, whether this effect be pain or some such process as
withering.

Suppose this Passion to be treated as of itself producing pain:
have we not still the duality of agent and patient, two results from
the one Act? The Act may no longer include the will to cause
pain; but
it produces something distinct from itself, a pain-causing medium
which enters into the object about to experience pain: this medium,
while retaining its individuality, produces something yet different,
the feeling of pain.

What does this suggest? Surely that the very medium- the act of
hearing, for instance- is, even before it produces pain or without
producing pain at all, a Passion of that into which it enters.

But hearing, with sensation in general, is in fact not a
Passion. Yet to feel pain is to experience a Passion- a Passion
however which is not opposed to Action.